


fiercely, the hand of lust

by lepidopteran



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, Ballet, Canon Era, M/M, Multi, Other, Piningjolras, Romanticism, arson plots, dancer!R, incendiary politics, overwrought with quotations from 1800s poetry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-01-04 12:03:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lepidopteran/pseuds/lepidopteran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is a rogue, though you would not know it by watching him dance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. fiercely, the hand of lust

 

 

 

 

 

> 
>          All is a ruin where rage knew no bounds:
>          Chio is levelled, and loathed by the hounds,
>              For shivered yest'reen was her lance;
>          Sulphurous vapors envenom the place
>          Where her true beauties of Beauty's true race
>              Were lately linked close in the dance.
>     
>          Dark is the desert, with one single soul;
>          Cerulean eyes! whence the burning tears roll
>              In anguish of uttermost shame,
>          Under the shadow of one shrub of May,
>          Splashed still with ruddy drops, bent in decay
>              Where fiercely the hand of Lust came.
>     
>          "Soft and sweet urchin, still red with the lash
>          Of rein and of scabbard of wild Kuzzilbash,
>              What lack you for changing your sob—
>          If not unto laughter beseeming a child—
>          To utterance milder, though they have defiled
>              The graves which they shrank not to rob?
>     
>          "Would'st thou a trinket, a flower, or scarf,
>          Would'st thou have silver? I'm ready with half
>              These sequins a-shine in the sun!
>          Still more have I money—if you'll but speak!"
>          He spoke: and furious the cry of the Greek,
>              "Oh, give me your dagger and gun!"
>     
>     
>                                          - V.H. "The Greek Boy"
> 
>  

Musichetta’s leg comes up slowly like the hand of a clock, until her toes indicate six o’clock in the evening.  She extends her leg behind her and spins on one foot, arms raised like an enormous bird of prey.  
  
The theater is chilly and the chandeliers cast a flickering light across the stage. Enjolras shivers and bites his tongue to keep his teeth from chattering. He doesn’t understand the ballet and his feet are beginning to ache in sympathy.  
  
“Transcendental,” Prouvaire whispers beside him, as Musichetta executes another excruciatingly slow pirhouette.  
  
Bossuet hums, satisfied. “Isn’t she just?”  
  
“The critics are calling her the definitive Giselle,” says Joly.  
  
Enjolras has watched Musichetta gallop on horseback down the narrowest part of the Rue de Prêcheurs _._ He has witnessed her cook enough stew to feed six poor families. He has known her to dance a Celtic sailor’s jig with Bahorel, barefoot, on a long table in the Café Musain.  
  
He hopes he will be forgiven if he does not yet understand how breaking her ankles for an audience of rich men is the most beautiful thing of which Musichetta is capable.    
  
She presents the exaggerated silhouette of her body to the audience, bony bird-arms curved in towards her chest. The line of identical women behind her hold melancholy poses, eyes downcast.  
  
A young man darts across the stage, with wide swift steps. He turns back to meet Musichetta, and she relaxes against him; he supports her body in a second series of slow _pirouettes_. When he lifts her, his movements are languid where hers are stiff and stark.

Enjolras pillows his head on his hand. The young man is shorter than most male dancers – shorter than Musichetta, though he lifts her with ease and grace. He is built almost more like a wrestler, with broad shoulders and big calves, but he _moves_ like a ballerina.

His steps are simple and his primary purpose seems to be as an interesting contrast to Musichetta, and a means of transporting her overextended body across the stage. But there is an intensity to his gentleness that keeps Enjolras watching, and inspires him to lean close to Prouvaire and ask:  
  
“Who is he?”  
  
“Him? Albrecht, the young nobleman in love with Giselle, who -- ”

“Not the role,” Enjolras interrupts. “The dancer.”  
  
“He’s called Grantaire,” provides Bossuet.  “Musichetta has spoken of him fondly. He is the debutant in the company, the baby, and I am given to understand that he shows great promise.”

The dancers have transitioned into an allegro section, and Grantaire levitates himself with a series of spritely _sissonnes_ and _tours jetes_. He smiles while he dances, just a slight upturn to the corners of his lips, and he seems to embody levity.  
  
Prouvaire laughs, delighted. “He is some kind of angel, to be sure.”  
  
“Only a man,” Enjolras scowls. “And a man who must be terribly frivolous, to spend his time dancing while others become men of medicine or of the law.”

“Then is it not frivolous of us to watch him dance?” says Prouvaire.  
  
“And I have often found the law rather more frivolous than dancing,” Bossuet adds. He smiles wryly and slaps Enjolras on the shoulder.

Enjolras sinks deeper into the velvet-cushioned theater seats, still scowling, eyes still locked on the dancer Grantaire.

He wonders what Grantaire’s face looks like at a short distance – if his smile is bright and steady like the sun, or as flickering and uncertain as the swinging chandeliers of le Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris.

***

After the performance they clamber down from the balcony, and after Joly whispers a few diplomatic words to an usher, they are whisked backstage. Musichetta answers the door to her dressing room with an enthusiastic hello and a kiss on the cheek for each of them.

“Thank you for coming, darlings,” she says, tugging them inside.  
  
 The ceiling is low and Enjolras is forced to stoop. Musichetta is halfway out of her costume, her stays unlaced and hanging stiffly off her shoulders, her underskirts hitched up around her waist and her legs bare. Enjolras turns his gaze aside while Prouvaire, Joly, and Bossuet flutter around her like a trio of attentive nursemaids, helping her out of the elaborate undergarments and into her modest daily attire.  
  
They chatter about the performance – Musichetta lists everything she did wrong while Bossuet vehemently exclaims that he never noticed a single mistake – and gossip about the performers.

“Are you well acquainted with Monsieur Grantaire, your Albrecht?” Prouvaire asks.

Musichetta laughs, a marvelous sound. “Oh, quite,” she says. “He is a rogue, though you would not know it by watching him dance.”

“I think that Enjolras would rather like to meet the rogue,” says Prouvaire.

“Only to inquire how he plans to make good use of his life once he is finished with _dancing_ ,” Enjolras says sharply, spitting out the last word as if its taste displeases him.

Musichetta frowns, brow furrowed, and Enjolras immediately feels wretched. “I was not aware you thought so little of the ballet, Enjolras,” she says.

“You mistake my meaning,” he backtracks hurriedly. “I only meant that he seems to be a talented dancer, but the body cannot sustain such a strenuous activity into middle age.”

“Grantaire is a young man of many talents,” Musichetta smiles, apparently soothed. “I would certainly introduce you, though perhaps another night – he has already gone out to the wine-shops with the men of the company.”

“I do worry about the effects of such exaggerated movements on the body,” says Joly, scrutinizing Musichetta through his spectacles. “Have you ever suffered serious aches and pains after dancing?”

“I have been dancing ballet since I was a child, and I always ache a little after a long practice,” says Musichetta. “It seems to take more time to recover in recent years, but I cannot say if the difference lies with my age or with the new styles, which take a greater toll on the body.”

“I have noticed that the style seems more exaggerated, more demanding,” says Prouvaire.

“You should see the special shoes they’re making for Marie Taglioni’s _Sylphide_ ,” says Musichetta. “It’s something entirely new. She will balance on the very tips of her toes throughout the entire dance. They call it _en pointe._ ”  
  
She snaps her fingers and rummages in the clutter on her boudoir table, emerging with a parcel. “Here we are – they sent me a model of the shoes. Some say that in a matter of years, every dancer will wear these.”

She hands the parcel to Enjolras, and he unfolds the layers of paper to reveal a pair of stiff leather-and-satin slippers, shaped like a caricature of a pointed foot. “They want you to wear these for the entire duration of the dance?” asks Enjolras. Musichetta nods.

“They look like some sort of torture device,” says Bossuet.

Joly picks one up and examines it. “These will bind the dancer’s feet into an unnatural position, leaving her vulnerable to all manner of injuries – tendinopathy, os trigonum, arthritis. If anyone asks you to wear these, Musichetta, you must tell him your doctor forbids it.”

Prouvaire, sprawled on the dusty loveseat, cradles one of the strange shoes in his hands. “Maybe there is a kind of beauty so powerful that it breaks the human form.”

Enjolras imagines the young dancer Grantaire with his ankles broken and bloodied, and he feels ill.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i dance but i don't dance ballet (as is probably obvious). i try to do my research but ballerinas, please please do correct me if i make any horrible mistakes
> 
> i also want to make it clear that i have the utmost appreciation and respect for the ballet -- enjolras' scorn does not represent the author's opinions!!


	2. love, the panic of reason

 

> Love, the panic of reason   
>  Communicates itself   
> In a shudder.   
>   
>  Let me just say,   
>  Do not yield anything.   
>  If I sigh, sing. It’s fine.
> 
> If I demure,  
> Sad, at your feet,  
>  And if I cry, it’s fine. Laugh.
> 
> A man often appears guileful  
>  But if I tremble,  
>  Beautiful, be afraid.  
>   
>                           \- V.H. “To the imperious beauty”

 

Candlelight flickers across grimy tables, like a ballerina gliding over the squalid alleyways of Paris. The wine at the Corinthe is weak but putrid. Enjolras is still nursing his first and only glass, deep in conversation with Musichetta.  
  
“Respectable women in this city may become dancers or governesses,” she is saying. “Poor women may become dancers, servants, or whores. The stage is the only place in Paris where women meet on our own terms.” The light casts dark shadows across her face. Her cheekbones stand out starkly to remind Enjolras of the malnourished _gamine_ he knew, before she was well-fed and well-loved and dancing in the ballet, more _lorette_ than _grisette_.

“And what of male dancers?” asks Enjolras. “I cannot imagine the kind of social position that would drive a young man to ballet.”

“You speak of it as if it is a death sentence rather than an art –“ Musichetta begins, but she trails off, smiling and waving to someone behind him.

Enjolras turns, and there in the doorway is the young dancer, Grantaire. His cheeks are rosy, and he is trailed by a cluster of other male dancers from the company. He laughs at something a taller man says, and braces his hand on the man’s chest; their shoulders bump together, intimate.

Then Grantaire catches Musichetta’s eye and shouts her name, beaming. Enjolras whips his head around, ashamed of being caught staring.

“Do you plan to stay out all night carousing, Grantaire?” Musichetta asks as he comes alongside their table. She slaps him playfully on the arm with her folded gloves.

“I was only searching for your beautiful face,” he says, and bends to kiss her cheek. She scoffs, but lets him.

“Fortune graces me tonight,” Grantaire carries on, turning now to Enjolras, who finds it difficult to meet his eyes, “for I have found not one beauty, but two. A bargain! Who is your fair friend, Musichetta?”

“My name is Enjolras,” he says, remembering his manners and offering Grantaire a hand.

Grantaire clasps it in both his own and bends, kissing Enjolras firmly on each cheek.

 “Did you see the ballet tonight, Enjolras? Musichetta is a vision sent by Aphrodite, the earthly embodiment of the muse Terpsichore, and so pure that I am certain the wicked men of Paris need only see her dance once and they will be purged of all vice.”

“She danced well,” says Enjolras, feeling a little dizzy though his wine-glass is still half-full. He inclines his head. “As did you.”

“Enjolras was just wondering why a young man would choose to devote himself to the ballet,” Musichetta says, a familiar mischievous spark in her eye. “Perhaps you could enlighten him.”

Grantaire pulls a chair up to their table and drapes himself over it. His arms, looped over the high back of the chair, strain against stiff linen. He wears his hair unfashionably long, like Enjolras, and when he rolls his shoulders a few locks of pitch black hair come loose from the tight knot at the nape of his neck and tumble into his face. He pushes them back with a broad hand. His brow is low over brown eyes full of light, set deep in a face hardened by summer weather, not soft and pale like Enjolras’ complexion.

“I spent the summer growing grapes in the Languedoc, along that very coast where the Greeks first sowed Dionysus’ seed in the fifth century. The Mediterranean sun begets a wine as dark as the sea Odysseus sailed, _rancio_ like old blood on a boxer’s knuckles. In the spring, I studied painting under Gros, but the nude models were dull in conversation and the neoclassical style gave me hand cramps.  Now it is winter, and I dance,” he says. “I am nineteen years old, nineteen times I have circled around the sun in this earthly chariot. Who can say where I shall fly to next?”

Grantaire spreads his hands, as if turning his fate over to some capricious god. When he smiles, his whole face opens and rises like the midwinter sky revealing the reborn sun, gaptoothed and crooked and broad.  His eyes crinkle up at the corners.

Enjolras drains his wine-glass. “A man who cares nothing for his future surely must not care for the future of his brothers and sons.” He know better than to speak of politics with strangers in a crowded public-house, but frivolity heats his blood and he cannot help but challenge this _jeune doré_.

Grantaire’s smile does not waver. He pulls the wine-bottle towards him and pours himself a generous drink. “Fair of face but not of temperament,” he says. “A man who lives for the future forgets the pleasures of the present.” He raises his glass to Enjolras and brings it to his lips.

Enjolras hears laughter and the musical clinking of crystal glasses, and turns to see Prouvaire, Joly, and Lesgle returning from the bar. Joly carries a bottle of port wine, Jehan carries the delicate beveled glasses, and Bossuet bears a tray of tiny cakes dripping with melted chocolate.

“The trembling doves on errand speeding to bear ambrosia to Olympus,” says Grantaire. His glass is empty and his lips are glazed glossy with red wine.  
  
Enjolras pushes his chair back from the table and stands, throwing his coat around his shoulders. “I am not a man who takes easily to indulgence,” he says. “Beauty is foreign to me.”

“Oh, do not go so early, Enjolras,” says Musichetta. “Even you are not too pure to raise a glass to our success.” She is still glowing from the exertion of dancing, and Enjolras feels a pang of guilt. “The night is yet young, and so are you.”

“The night is a time for me to attend to my studies.” He inclines his head. “I would not wish to sour the celebration, so I must bid you goodnight.”

He turns on his heel and is halfway out the door, when he feels a hand at his elbow.

It is Grantaire’s hand, boyish but roughened, with knuckles like bolts in a cannon’s trunnions. Caught in the doorway, Enjolras is forced to stoop away from the low wooden frame. Grantaire smiles up at him, defiantly gentle. His fingers are looped loosely around Enjolras’ small arm, and he stands perfectly still under Enjolras’ firm stare, lips parted and eyes wide.

“Has the siren forgotten his song?” Enjolras says, so quietly that maybe only he hears it. This boy is like the sirens, who seduce captains away from their campaigns to bring their honor crashing on the rocks of their desires.

Grantaire lets his hand fall, and he smiles at the floor. “You are a liar,” he says.

“I beg your pardon?” says Enjolras.

Grantaire looks up, and his eyes are unexpectedly soft. “If you say that beauty is foreign to you, you must not be well acquainted with yourself.”

“I know myself well enough, thank you,” says Enjolras, clipped. He shakes his arm and Grantaire’s hand falls away immediately, without resistance. The heavy door slams shut between them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gratuitous french vocab:
> 
> gamine: a female street child  
> lorette: a "kept woman"  
> grisette: a working-class woman  
> rancio: wine term for a nutty flavor in aged wines (from the Spanish for rancid)  
> jeune doré: singular of "jeunesse dorée," gilded youth, the term for a trend of dandyism in late 1700s/early 1800s Paris
> 
> R paraphrases Homer, "That way not even the winged ones pass by/ Not even the trembling doves on errand speeding / To bear ambrosia to Father Zeus," from a passage in the Odyssey describing the sirens


	3. i break the bounds - i see

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You say, "Where goest thou?" I cannot tell,  
> And still go on. If but the way be straight,  
> It cannot go amiss! before me lies  
> Dawn and the Day; the Night behind me; that  
> Suffices me; I break the bounds -  
> I see, and nothing more. Believe, and nothing less.  
> My future is not one of my concerns.
> 
> \- Victor Hugo, "The Poet's Simple Faith."

The candle at Enjolras’ elbow is burned down to a stub, barely more than a wick floating in a pool of tallow. He bends his head nearer to the page, straining to make out dense typesetting in the guttering light.  
  
The first greyish glow of dawn, salvation of the nocturnal student’s eyesight, is just beginning to glow through the cracks in the slums and spill into Enjolras’ alleyway. Now it creeps across his window-frame to cast a little square of gold across _Théorie des lois criminelles._  
  
Still, the words swim in his vision. He rubs at his eyes and blinks into the dingy morning beyond his window. Indistinctly he can hear the sisters at Petit-Picpus closing the matins. A bell tolls, sending up a cloud of pigeons who add their disgruntled voices to the choir.  
  
This is hardly the first time that Enjolras has lost sleep in pursuit of his studies, but rarely has he felt so distracted. Usually, his mind focuses narrowly on command. It’s as if the boy dancer Grantaire had taken Enjolras’ thoughts up in cupped hands and blown them into the wind.

 _If you say that beauty is foreign to you, you must not be well acquainted with yourself._  
  
Honestly, the gall! Enjolras knows himself as well as any man can, he’s sure, and he has only bitter memories of his decadent childhood. Pleasure is a distraction; beauty is a balm for the working man’s wounds, but no cure.  
  
Something chimes against the window frame, and gold flashes in the corner of Enjolras’ eye. He raises the sash of the window, and finds a locket lying on the sill. A little golden thing of filigreed wire, like a cage, with a long chain and a clasp of mother-of-pearl. In the alley below, Bahorel grins up, thumbs hooked in his lapels.  
  
“What’s new?” Enjolras shouts down to him.  
  
“Open it,” Bahorel says. One of his eyes is swollen shut, bruised purple. The other sparkles with mirth.  
  
Enjolras thumbs open the clasp of the little locket. Inside is a folded slip of paper, with a fluid scrawl of ink:  
  
 _Chaste beauté! viens-tu me combattre ou m'absoudre?  
  
_ “What is this, a riddle?” says Enjolras, balling up the slip of paper and hiding it away. “You know I don’t understand the damn things. Where did you find it? Where did you get _this_?” He dangles the locket on its chain; it swings like a pendulum, catching the sun. “What quarrel do you have with me, Bahorel, coming to my bedroom at dawn and bombarding me with riddles and jewelery?”  
  
As he speaks Enjolras swings his legs over the windowsill, book in one hand and locket in the other, and clambers down the rough brick façade. The window slams shut behind him; the morning is brisk but not cold. Bahorel swings him into a tight embrace, knocking the wind out of him, and snatches the book out of his hand.  
  
“It never hurts my conscience to call on you so early, for I always find you hunched over your schoolbooks.” He examines the cover. “ _Théorie des lois criminelles,_ really? Girondist shit.”

“It was groundbreaking at the time of publication,” Enjolras says sourly. He makes to grab the book from Bahorel, but the bigger man swings it out of his reach and chassés a few steps down the alley, laughing.

Enjolras doesn’t rise to the bait, but tosses the locket three feet in the air and catches it by the chain. “Is this a token from a lady? Would you be sorry to lose it?”  
  
“It’s only a trinket,” says Bahorel.  
  
Enjolras dangles the trinket over a mud-puddle in the street, and Bahorel immediately leaps to grasp it out of the air.  
  
“If you’re tired of games, do explain,” Enjolras prompts, with a sweeping gesture from Bahorel’s black eye to the locket in his fist. “Did you brawl with a grisette who left you her jewelry for remembrance?”

“I fought a man last night, as it happens,” says Bahorel, unfazed. “A young man, wild with drink. He had the mad look of a love-struck Bacchus. He made a lively opponent, and after our match we struck up conversation. Turned out he was a friend of our own dear Musichetta, a dancer in her company. He told me the strangest tale of a man he met with a woman’s fair face and hair like gold.” Bahorel smirks. “I agreed to bring you his message.”

“What’s the meaning of this foolishness?” says Enjolras, waving the crumpled slip of paper.

"Don’t ask me, I’m only the messenger,” says Bahorel. “It’s not foolishness, in fact, but poetry. A line from _Éloa_ , by that royalist bastard Vigny. As to its significance, you might consult with Prouvaire. I know he owns a copy."  
  
"And what of the locket?” Enjolras says. “Another drunkard’s love-token?”  
  
“The same drunkard, in fact,” says Bahorel. “And here is the best part of my story. He directed me to a workshop, a fan-maker’s house off the rue de Saint-Marc. A friend of his works there, painting fans, and makes these trinkets from scraps in his spare time. So I went to visit the man.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“And I came straight here,” says Bahorel. “You’ve got to meet him.” Bahorel has a look of childlike wonder, but Enjolras feels as if he’s missed the punchline of a joke. Musichetta, the dancer Grantaire, and now Bahorel, crazed over shoes and fans.

“There are enough fan-makers in Paris,” Enjolras declares. In fact, there are only fifteen fan-maker's houses in Paris – more than enough for Enjolras. “What’s special about this one?”  
  
“See for yourself.” There’s a glint in Bahorel’s eye that Enjolras knows means trouble.  
  
-

The heavy masonry of the Passage des Panoramas looms over the quiet cobblestone streets, its twin rotundas blocking the sun while its gas lamps beckon passersby into the enclave of shops and galleries. Enjolras hates the place. He can't bear the crowds who clamor for artisanal fripperies at all hours. Give him the open-air _agora_ over the roofed marketplace, any day. At least the _agora_ can be roused by a good speech.  
  
He clenches his jaw and moves to pass under the imposing archway of the main entrance, but Bahorel rests a large hand delicately on Enjolras' elbow and directs him around the corner, to the alleyway onto which the back-rooms of the _ateliers_ expel their sawdust.  
  
Raised voices and the clang of hammers and awls mingles with the morning birdsong. The workshops are open all hours, more or less; many of the workers hold several jobs and sleep at odd hours. A few men lean against the brick walls, lingering over unassuming breakfasts of bread and cheese. At the far end of the alley, two men are stooped over a hand of cards, bickering amiably.

Enjolras' eye catches on a man sitting on a crate under an open window, his knees pulled up to his chest and tight curls of salt-and-pepper hair falling into his eyes. His nose is buried in a book. Enjolras is straining to catch sight of the title, when the man looks up. His eyes light on them and he smiles, raises one hand in greeting.

At first Enjolras is embarrassed to be caught staring, but Bahorel tugs at his sleeve and whispers, “That's him.” Then he's dragging Enjolras forward, and the reader rises, thumb tucked into his book to keep the place.

Enjolras is surprised to see that he is quite young, in spite of the gray in his hair. There are the beginnings of crowsfeet at the corners of his eyes, and faint worry lines on his brow, but his complexion is fresh and youthful under his coarse beard.  
  
“Bahorel,” the man says by way of greeting. He nods to Enjolras. “Who's the boy?”

Enjolras feels himself flush. He knows well enough how young he appears – often passing for a tender boy of sixteen, though he is twenty-one years old and a man in his own right. Before he can assert himself, his eyes catch on the book under the man's arm and he gasps with delight.  
  
“Adam Mickiewicz!” He exclaims.  
  
“The _poeta-wieszcz_ ,” the worker confirms, with a sly smile.  
  
“Rarely have I met another Frenchman who reads him,” says Enjolras.  
  
“Do you meet many _Frenchmen_ in workshop alleyways at the crack of dawn?” asks the man, not unkindly, though his chin juts out proudly. “Or many Frenchmen by the name of Mojżesz Feuilly?”  
  
Enjolras introduces himself summarily, but his eyes are fixed on the book. Feuilly sees him staring and passes it over, indicating a dog-eared page. “Have you read this one? _Oda do młodości_?”  
  
“No, I haven't -” Enjolras takes the book, and his eyes are met by an onslaught of unfamilar words. “I'm afraid I don't read Polish,” he stammers. “I've only read his first anthology and his sonnets, and those in translation.”  
  
“That's alright,” Feuilly assures him, coming around to read over his shoulder. “This work is not so well known, but it his best. His most radical. So radical, in fact, it has rarely been published. I am thinking of attempting a French translation – I think it could be of great value to your countrymen.” He leans closer, voice lowered. “Bahorel has told me something of your inclinations, Enjolras.”  
  
Enjolras startles, almost losing his grip on the book; Feuilly steadies him by the elbow. “So you didn't really think I was some – green youth?” he hisses. “I had no idea this was a political meeting.”  
He turns to give Bahorel a piece of his mind, but the wastrel has wandered off to join in the game of cards.  
  
Feuilly laughs. “I do think you are some green youth,” says Feuilly, “but just the sort of green youth your country needs. I must apologize for my previous slight.” He glances around the alleyway. “My compatriots here, though not particularly sympathetic to your king, are wary of anything so incendiary as this,” he taps the page again.  
  
“Could you hazard a draft of that translation for me?” says Enjolras.  
  
“Sit down with me and I'll attempt it.”  
  
They bend over the book together, and Feuilly patiently runs his agile fingers along the densely-printed lines of Polish, often launching on tangents about the particular significance of a word or phrase. From the first line -  “No heart, no spirit, cadaverous masses” – Enjolras' breath catches in his throat.  
  
“ _En masse_ , young friends!” Feuilly reads. “The happiness of all shall be our ends. Strong in unity, wise in rage – _En masse,_ young friends!”  
  
“It's said to be the manifesto for a secret student society,” Feuilly explains. “It would never make it past the Russian censors; this is an unauthorized copy from Lviv. But every young Polish man knows it – I have seen it copied and recopied in schoolboy notebooks long before it ever made it to the presses.”  
  
“ _En masse,_ young friends ...” Enjolras repeats.  
  
The sun is high in the sky by now, flooding the alley with light. Feuilly claps Enjolras on the shoulder, and stands.  
  
“Forgive me for keeping you from your work,” Enjolras says.

“No matter,” Feuilly shakes his head. “Come around any time, my friend. I'm here all hours in any case.”  
  
“Could I see what you're working on?” Enjolras asks tentatively. He isn't sure he likes the idea of this man wasting his best years in a workshop.  
  
But Feuilly's dark eyes light up and he beckons Enjolras over the threshold. The workshop is well-lit by high windows; it smells of wood varnish. They pass a man tooling intricate patterns into a strip of white leather, another choosing the best from an array of ostentatious ostrich feathers.

Feuilly leads Enjolras to a workbench against the far wall. Several fans lie open on the work surface, with half-finished paintings on their leaves. One is covered in an intricate design embroidered in seed beads. The wall is covered in fabric samples and paint chips. Here and there are a number of tiny sculptures in gilt wire, with the same craftsmanship as the locket.  
  
Reminded of the strange sequence of events that brought him here, Enjolras feels in his pocket and withdraws the slip of paper with its confounding message. He shows it to Feuilly.  
  
“You know the man who wrote this?”  
  
Feuilly takes the paper and squints at it, then laughs and hands it back with a shake of his head. He mutters “ _Grantaire_ ,” as if scolding the boy from afar.  
  
So it _was_ him, then. Enjolras could imagine any number of dark-haired drunks sending him cryptic messages, but something deep in the pit of his stomach is not surprised.  
  
He reads the note again and scowls. What the hell is he supposed to make of this riddle?

“If Grantaire sent you such a message,” says Feuilly, “he sees something in you that you will never convince him not to see.”

-  
  
Enjolras can already hear the strains of a flute as he rounds the corner onto Prouvaire's street. He can see the back of Prouvaire's head framed in his open window, long brown curls haphazardly bound in a silk scarf, so that he looks like nothing more than Delacroix's _Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi._  
  
Enjolras stands under the window and listens for only a moment before he calls out, “What tune is this?”  
  
Prouvaire disengages his lips from the flute and turns his head around, smiling languidly at the sight of Enjolras. “Just an air from Schneitzhöeffer's new ballet,” he says. “ _La sylphide._ It's far from complete, but our dear Musichetta acquired the draft. Philippe Taglioni has already begun the choreography, starring his own daughter Marie.” He lifts his flute and repeats the last bar. “It does evoke the sylphs, flighty spirits of mist and enchanted vapor – don't you think?”

“I suppose,” Enjolras says. He remembers the shoes Musichetta showed them, the ones designed to hold Marie Taglioni aloft on the tips of her toes, and grimaces.  
  
“You look a fright, Enjolras,” Prouvaire comments, laying his flute tenderly in its velvet case. “Do come upstairs and let me comb your hair.”  
  
Prouvaire's family are Maghrebi traders of artisanal weavings, and fine plush carpets sprawl across every inch of his floor. A large tapestry of a pomegranate tree covers one wall, while the windows are draped in layer after layer of black Chantilly lace. Enjolras has always found the decadence of these rooms slightly oppressive, not least because of the sticky-sweet myrrh and balsam incense Prouvaire burns constantly. Enjolras loosens his haphazardly-tied cravat even further, careless of the untidy loops of silk hanging limp around his neck.

Prouvaire says something inaudible about the sorry state of young men in Paris today as he disappears into his bedchamber, and emerges with a mother-of-pearl comb and a crystal bottle that looks suspiciously like perfume. Enjolras eyes it warily as Prouvaire pours a drop of golden oil into his palm.

“Do you come into my house looking like a gamin in your shirtsleeves and expect me to do nothing about it?” Prouvaire scolds. “Sit down.”

Enjolras sinks into the cushions of an armchair, and shivers at the tingling sensation as Prouvaire massages the sweet-smelling oil into his scalp, gently untangling the curls that fall to Enjolras' jaw.  
  
After a minute of fussing with Enjolras' cravat, Prouvaire hums to himself, apparently contented. He passes Enjolras a hand-mirror that matches the comb. “Much better.”

Enjolras looks. He tends to avoid mirrors, doesn't keep one in his own quarters – he already knows what he looks like. The face that stares back at him is all too familiar. Blond curls, made soft and glossy by Prouvaire's ministrations, frame a rounded face with a weak chin and the small red mouth of a petulant child. He tilts his head and scowls at the flush in his cheeks.

Prouvaire drapes his long arms around Enjolras' neck and peers over his shoulder. “I've always thought you look like Hadrian's beloved Antinous,” he says. “You remember the bust of him at the Louvre, eyes cast down, hair coiffed under a circlet of lotus-flowers? Yet you are a more ferocious Antinous – head up, hair wild.” He runs one elegant brown hand through Enjolras' curls, tucking them behind his ear, and for an instant Enjolras can see the man Prouvaire conjures – a beauty not content to be kept as consort, a lover untamed, _Antinous farouche_.  
  
Enjolras shakes his head to clear it. He sets the mirror face-down on a mahogany side-table, flinching away from its gleaming handle as if burned. “I would hate to be deified for my beauty. Let me be forgotten when I die, if it means our fight can live.”

“Don't imagine you know the circumstances of your own death. You'll live your life as a corpse walking.”

Enjolras rises and goes to the window, desperate for fresh air. “I can't help but think of it.” He gestures to the street. “You only have to step outside to feel the people's _rage_ , Jehan.” He calls his friend by the endearment tenderly, more entreating him to understand than rousing him to revolt.

Prouvaire steps nearer and rests a hand on Enjolras' cheek. “The rage you feel is your own. It's not _rage_ that drives revolt, but exhaustion, hunger, imprisonment – all things that rob us of the beauty of the world and compel us to retrieve it from the thieves.”

Enjolras looks up, and Prouvaire's eyes are earnest. “You would fight for beauty?”

“What else is there to fight for?”

“Life itself.”

“Life _is_ beauty, don't you see?” says Prouvaire. “The food we eat to sustain us, we make it beautiful. The clothes we wear to keep off the cold, we make them beautiful. Even when a man goes to his grave – this too should be a moment of beauty. I despise kings because they horde the beauty God granted to all his people, hide it away in glittering palaces, and leave us nothing but ugliness. The ugliness of work, prison, torture, starvation, conquest. A king makes the blessed into the wretched.”  
  
He takes Enjolras' face in both hands.“We only allow such injustice when we have convinced ourselves we don't deserve beauty.”

The sun is setting, surrounding Prouvaire in a hazy golden glow. He says nothing when Enjolras lets his head drop onto the velvet lapel of Prouvaire's jacket. Just wraps his arms around Enjolras' shoulders and leads him to the chaise. Enjolras is half drunk on despair and half drunk on exhaustion, his sleepless night finally catching up to him, and the many silk pillows are welcome under his weary head.

When he wakes up Prouvaire is cross-legged on the floor, hookah pipe in hand, blowing smoke rings which float lazily out the open window into the night. Enjolras watches him idly for a moment, then startles and sits up when he notices his own waistcoat hanging open over Prouvaire's shirt.

“Looking for this?” Prouvaire slips a hand into the pocket and holds up a slip of paper between two long fingers. “Why on earth are you going around with lines from Vigny in your waistcoat pocket?”

“That's what I came to ask you.” Enjolras swings his legs to the floor. Prouvaire removed his shoes, as well; his stockings are hanging to dry by the stove. The carpet is soft against his bare feet. “Is that hashish, or tobacco?”

“Both.” Prouvaire stands and reaches over Enjolras' head to the bookshelf set deep into the wall. He selects a thin volume and sits beside Enjolras. “ _Éloa_ _._ The product of a single night of revelatory creative passion. Lucifer woos an angel, only to cause her to fall as he did. She shows him that he is capable of love, and longs to elevate him from misery. But their love is cursed – to touch her is to destroy everything he found beautiful in her.”  
  
“A hackneyed tragedy,” says Enjolras.

“It's not so simple as that.” Prouvaire opens the book, revealing margins crammed with his own notes. “Here's your passage.”

 _  
 _C'est pour avoir aimé, c'est pour avoir sauvé,_  
 _Que je suis malheureux, que je suis réprouvé._  
 _Chaste beauté! viens-tu me combattre ou m'absoudre?__  
  
It is for love, it is for salvation,  
That I am unhappy, that I am damned.  
Chaste beauty! Have you come to fight me or absolve me?

  
  
“It's not a plea for absolution, not really,” says Prouvaire. “The joke here -”

“ _Joke_?” Enjolras certainly isn't laughing.

“Yes, it's a joke,” says Prouvaire. “A trick question. He no longer believes in absolution – he is already disillusioned to any truthful distinction between good and evil, heaven and hell. He promises Éloa, 'Soon with equal scorn, good and evil will be confounded for us.' That is freedom – a hope that love can transcend the idea that one is either an angel or a demon.”

“But it doesn't,” Enjolras protests. “Does it?” He tugs the book out of Prouvaire's hands and flips to the end. “Look, here – Éloa is dragged to hell after all.”  
  
“I said it wasn't a simple story,” Prouvaire shrugs. “I never said it had a happy ending. Still, consider this. Lucifer calls himself a devil, but what is a devil, after all? A creature without hope, without remorse. Lucifer hopes that he can love, feels remorse when he cannot. Is he a devil, then? Is Éloa an angel if she chooses to follow him to Hell? And was she wrong to make that choice, if it was a manifestation of the free will God gave her?”

“Obviously it's wrong if she ends up in Hell.” Enjolras slams the book shut. Prouvaire winces.

“Don't pretend you don't understand poetry, Enjolras. It's exhausting,” says Prouvaire. “Your problem is that you only understand poetry of conspiracy, paintings of battle scenes, symphonies for arsonists and operas for regicides. You can't see that this is also revolutionary,” he says, laying a hand on the book's leather cover. “While you wait for war on the streets of Paris, there are battles being fought in her theaters, her print shops, her music halls.”

Enjolras scoffs. “Bourgeois battles of pleasantries and slights.”

 _“_ Not so,” says Prouvaire. “Haven't you heard? Just last week, the opening night of a play turned into a riot. An all-out brawl. Blood and piss everywhere.”  
  
“Why would anyone waste so much energy on the theater?”

Prouvaire jumps to his feet, and holds Grantaire's scribbled note aloft. “Why have you kept this scrap of poetry in your waistcoat pocket?”

Enjolras rises and snatches the slip of paper out of Prouvaire's hand. Without hesitation, he drops it into the flame of a candle. It flares and crackles into soot. Enjolras tugs on his boots over bare feet, and leaves his stocking hanging by the stove and his waistcoat hanging on Prouvaire's shoulders.

As he stalks down the street, he hears Prouvaire playing on his flute again. He's picked up right where he left off in _La sylphide._  
  
-  
  
The streets are quiet here. A bottle breaks, a dog howls in a far-off alley. As Enjolras rushes down side-streets, heart speeding, the bricks are older, paving stones broken up, streets dark and narrow, drain-pipes bent and chimneys rusted. Babies bawl and children polish knives on rotting stairways. There's a nervous tension under Enjolras skin, aching towards an end he knows is inevitable – _the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man._

He takes the stairs two at a time and fumbles with his keys in the darkened hallway, but freezes when he hears footsteps on the other side of his door. The door swings open, and his heart leaps with relief.

“Where have you been all day?” says Courfeyrac. He's perched on Enjolras' desk, surrounded by a mess of schoolbooks and sheaths of paper more sensitive than anything Enjolras hands in to the professors at the Sorbonne. “Combeferre here has been worried sick.”

“It did cross my mind that you might be in trouble,” Combeferre says mildly, guiding Enjolras over the threshold with a hand between his shoulders.

“I was studying poetry,” says Enjolras.

Combeferre and Courfeyrac exchange a glance as Enjolras pulls the curtains closed. Courfeyrac reaches up and tugs at Enjolras' curls. “It's done wonders for your hair.”

Combeferre reaches into his jacket and produces an unremarkable scroll tied with twine. Enjolras takes it, struggling to undo the knot with shaking hands. “This is all of them?”

The scroll unfurls to reveal a dense map of Paris, marked with paths in blue ink and scattered red dots.

“Every powder magazine in the city,” Courfeyrac confirms, tapping one of the red marks, “and the low-traffic streets nearby,” He reaches around Enjolras to trace one such route.

“I'm impressed.”

Combeferre steps closer, eyes shadowed in the low light. “We're laying the foundations we'll need when the time comes.” His voice is low and steady, so much steadier than Enjolras feels.

“Why wait? We've kept ourselves busy with maps and murmurs long enough. We've planned in silence while children murder each other for a bit of bread,” says Enjolras. He sets the map on the desk, and places a hand on each of his friend's shoulders, drawing them close to his side. “The horses will not run until we fire the starting shot.”

“The king will attend the final night of the ballet _La fille mal gardée_ at the Salle Le Peletier,” says Courfeyrac, indicating a place on the map. Without removing his finger from the paper, he traces a line directly to a red blotch of ink.

The image of Grantaire's note bursting into flame flashes in Enjolras' mind. The flame blossoms into a powder magazine exploding in his head, and its heat touches every part of Enjolras' body, washing his vision white.

“ _En masse_ , young friends.”

Strong in unity, wise in rage. He sees clearly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can read "éloa" here (in french and english): http://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/61400/eloaweb.html
> 
> and "oda do młodości" here (in polish and english): http://tlumacz-literatury.pl/polishpoetryfree.pdf
> 
> you can peep "greece on the ruins of missolonghi" here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Eug%C3%A8ne_Ferdinand_Victor_Delacroix_017.jpg
> 
> and the antinous mondragone, the bust jehan refers to, here: http://www.antinoos.info/bild/antin114.jpg
> 
> you can send me questions, hate mail, complaints of historical inaccuracy, old school mixtapes, cryptic declarations of love, and ransom notes here: simonmonbeau.tumblr.com
> 
> thanks for reading!! xoxo


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